Recently started a training in Shamanism. One of our goals is to let go of our over domestication and open to be feral and agile. I had no idea how making this commitment in my process was going to change how I see myself and really everything the world. There are so many ways I’ve been domesticated that I sometimes don’t even realize. I just learned to submit and it became second nature. Now I can see the ways I've compromised myself and the way others do this too and it's quite painful.

My trauma. No matter what community I belonged to in the past no matter how spiritual focused or otherwise the one thing that always followed me was my trauma. Every group I belonged to would always end up the same way.

The greatest gift we can give ourselves and others. Tonight I sit with my inner little girls and my teenage part is here. She is angry sad hurting and feeling alone. As I visualize her and embrace her feelings I am in awe I still have hurt feelings from my first time falling in love.

Sitting with my heart has been a practice I’ve been cultivating for a while now. This practice has made me more and more in touch with what I call tangles in my heart. Tangles are pain or what feels like knots in my heart. What I experience the knots as are painful experiences I didn’t get the support or care I needed to process the challenging feelings and emotions I was experiencing. My experience is these tangles stay in my heart space and cause misinterpreted perceptions in my relationship with myself and with others.

My personal work in the last 15 years included lots of work with my inner children. All the grown and not so grown parts deep inside me that felt loved or felt stuck in fear. A major hurdle I overcame was in my later 20’s, when I realized I had continuously had partners that were physically, mentally or both types of abusive. But not only was I a victim but I was also using abuse. In my teen years I got into fights, I bullied people I didn’t like and was cruel a lot. So coming to the conclusion that I was being abused was also for me coming to terms with the abuse and harm I had caused. That is always the hardest part for us humans I think. Seeing the harm we caused is not something we want to look at. But in all cases we have to look at ourselves if we want to grow.

I’m 37 and I’ve never known until the last 2-3 years but some part of me always felt like I was missing something. Turns out I was. It was a secure attachment. For the last 12 years I’ve been really busy working hard on to overcome many things. First it was an ulcer, dysfunctional relationships, addiction, codependency, depression and chronic pain. To say the least it’s been exhausting.

This Summer I was walking past a painting In Carmel, Ca, it seemed familiar to me and a memory come of a painting that my great grandmother painted. A painting that hung in our house growing up. That painting combined with walking through this beautiful artist area of Carmel created an Aha... moment. All the sudden it was as if I saw the path of my female ancestral line laid out in front of me. All the lives of my grandmothers and great grandmothers combined and I saw a common thread. Almost everyone of my grandmothers and the females in my family have suffered some sort of abuse or had to leave abusive relationships.

When on my path I had an experience that bridged the gap between eastern spirituality and western psychology.

A little over a year ago now I started therapy with a new therapist who works specifically with the different child parts inside, to get them secure. It has to do with creating a secure attachment, not just for adult me but for all my inner little children too. Here's a little about attachment from my internal experience, study and my overall understanding. There are 3 attachment styles. Depending on what you read, these 3 I experienced myself and I believe explains it all in the name.

I want to talk about feminine oppression. This morning it is on my mind and heart. It's not just female oppression but the rape and violence being done to mother earth. Today this is burning inside me like a wildfire. Anger rage and disgust at the oppression and blaton damage we cause to mother earth and women. After visiting New Mexico and then India this month it's no wonder I am burning up inside. From reading about a nuclear power plant that has been giving the indigenous people of new mexico cancer to seeing rivers, lakes and land covered in trash in india.